Arch Linux

in-der-welt-sein

Member

Registered: 2019-04-16

Posts: 2

Nvidia Optimus with Nouveau/without bbswitch?

So I recently installed Arch on a laptop with a very recent hardware configuration (Intel 8750H + Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q) and I have absolutely no use for the discrete Nvidia GPU when booted into Arch (wrestled with Nvidia drivers on Linux years ago, and it stands out as the single most painful episode in my entire history of interaction with computers, even after I got it to work -- I highly doubt it's changed much...).

So as of right now, it's sitting idle and drawing a not-insignificant amount of energy doing jack squat. I'd like to use the Optimus feature on the RTX 2070 to issue a power-off command, but the problem is that (to my knowledge) only bbswitch and acpi_call are capable of doing this -- and both are in essence ugly hacks on a deprecated kernel API that have been effectively unmaintained for several years now. On top of that, bbswitch/acpi_call require me to pass

acpi_osi='Windows 2009'

to the kernel command-line, which for some reason completely breaks suspend-to-RAM on my laptop.

My question is: is there a non-bbswitch/acpi_call way to power off a very recent (NV130 and newer) Optimus GPU? I read on the Nouveau wiki that it claims to support Optimus and PRIME and that the card "should power off after 5 seconds of inactivity", but nothing in my experience with it so far lines up with this.

Last edited by in-der-welt-sein (2019-04-16 02:47:22)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,243

Re: Nvidia Optimus with Nouveau/without bbswitch?

Nouveau cannot control a card this new. What you can try is to force standard pcie aspm on the relevant bus: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Po … Management (blacklist nouveau as well so that it doesn't interfere)

in-der-welt-sein

Member

Registered: 2019-04-16

Posts: 2

Re: Nvidia Optimus with Nouveau/without bbswitch?

Thanks. Would this power off the card, or do I do this in conjunction with bbswitch?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,243

Re: Nvidia Optimus with Nouveau/without bbswitch?

It should power it off itself, for as much as is possible. On my system I can use bbswitch just fine and haven't looked into any other alternatives.